Contemporary Art Talk - Simon Bill

Event overview

The study of visual perception, as described by the Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka, seeks to answer the question Why do things look as they do? This talk looks first at an array of cultural phenomena – The 80s 'Thatcher Illusion', Op Art in the 60s, various kinds of 3D imagery like the 90s 'Magic Eye' craze, recent internet memes like 'The Dress', and the sci-fi movie 'The Matrix'. It then gives a survey of visual perception as it figures, unusually, in both halves of academia. We approach the treatment of perception in philosophy mainly through Maurice Merleau-Ponty's 'Phenomenology of Perception'. The last part of the talk gives an introductory account of the current cognitive and neuro- psychology of perception, illustrated with many of the 'optical illusion' images neuroscience uses as research tools, such as Akiyoshi Kitaoka's 'rotating snakes'.

Simon Bill is an artist and writer. In 2014/15 he had a solo show at the BALTIC centre for contemporary art, Gateshead, called 'Lucky Jim'. He has published a novel, 'Artist in Residence' (Sort of Books, 2016), and, as a consequence of that work of fiction, was appointed artist in residence for nine months at the Gulbenkian Science Institute, Lisbon, in 2017.